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Imperial Valley’s Independent Grid Is Its Greatest Economic Asset — Don’t Let Insiders Waste It

Most of California’s electricity grid is managed by the California Independent System Operator — CAISO. It is a complex, interconnected system that serves the vast majority of the state, coordinates hundreds of generators and utilities, and manages the moment-to-moment balance of supply and demand across a massive geographic footprint. It is also constrained. Transmission bottlenecks limit where power can flow. Interconnection queues for new generation stretch for years. Major new industrial loads in CAISO territory require extensive studies, upgrades, and cost allocations that can take half a decade to resolve.

Imperial Valley operates outside this system. The Imperial Irrigation District is one of a handful of independent utility systems in California that operates outside CAISO’s authority. IID manages its own generation, its own transmission, and its own distribution. It sets its own rates, manages its own interconnection queue, and makes its own capacity allocation decisions.

For a major data center developer evaluating sites across the Southwest, this independence is not a minor operational detail. It is a fundamental competitive advantage that shortens interconnection timelines, simplifies the regulatory environment, and provides access to a stable, locally-controlled power supply that CAISO-tied utilities cannot reliably offer at the scale a hyperscale data center requires.

What the Independent Grid Enables

A data center that connects to IID’s system does not navigate CAISO’s interconnection queue. It does not compete with hundreds of other projects for transmission capacity on a congested statewide system. It negotiates directly with IID, which has the authority to make binding commitments about service without waiting for CAISO approvals, transmission studies, or allocation decisions made by a system operator in Folsom.

This simplicity has enormous economic value. Interconnection delays in CAISO territory routinely add two to four years to major project timelines. During those years, developers carry costs on land, engineering, and financing without generating revenue. For a $10 billion project, the carrying cost of a two-year delay can approach hundreds of millions of dollars. IID’s independent grid, properly managed to welcome industrial customers, eliminates that exposure entirely.

Imperial Valley is not competing with Riverside County or Sacramento for this investment. It is competing with West Texas, rural Nevada, and eastern Washington. The independent grid is what puts it in the same conversation as those locations — and in some respects ahead of them.

The Waste of Not Using This Advantage

An independent grid that is managed to protect the interests of connected consultants rather than attract the industrial customers it is positioned to serve is not a competitive advantage. It is a wasted asset.

If the allegations in the IVCM federal lawsuit are accurate — that IID’s posture toward the IVDC has been influenced by Z-Global’s competing interests rather than by the utility’s obligation to its ratepayers and its service territory — then Imperial Valley is allowing one of its most significant economic development advantages to be used against itself.

IID’s independent grid should be the headline in every economic development pitch Imperial County makes to site selectors. It should be the reason that major industrial projects choose Imperial Valley over comparable sites in CAISO territory. It should be generating revenue, jobs, and economic development that benefits every household in the service territory.

Instead, it is the subject of a federal lawsuit alleging that its capacity is being allocated to protect a consultancy’s interests rather than serve its ratepayers. That is not the use of a competitive advantage. It is the squandering of one. And the people of Imperial Valley deserve better from the utility they own.

The Largest Private Investment in Imperial County History — And Why Some Officials Want to Stop It

There is a question that every economic development official in a chronically underinvested region eventually confronts: when the investment finally comes, will the institutions that are supposed to welcome it actually do so?

Imperial County is confronting that question right now. The Imperial Valley Data Center represents a $10 billion capital commitment to a 75-acre industrial site in one of the most economically distressed counties in California. No private entity in the county’s history has made a comparable investment commitment. Not the agricultural processors, not the energy companies, not the logistics firms that have come and gone over the decades. Ten billion dollars, on land that is zoned for exactly this use, approved through the county’s legitimate ministerial process.

And some of the region’s own officials are litigating to stop it.

Scale in Context

It is worth sitting with what $10 billion means in a county the size of Imperial. The county’s total assessed value — the cumulative value of all property, commercial and residential, within its borders — is measured in the tens of billions. A single private investment of $10 billion doesn’t just add to that base; it restructures it. The ratio of commercial to residential assessed value shifts. The county’s credit position improves. The ability to finance future infrastructure improvements — schools, roads, water systems — expands because the collateral base supporting those instruments is materially stronger.

This is before a single permanent employee is hired, before a single server is powered on, before the recurring $28.75 million in annual property tax begins flowing to county services.

What the Multiplier Looks Like on the Ground

Economic multipliers are often cited as justification for subsidizing private investment. In this case, no subsidy is being requested — the developer is paying full cost for permits, infrastructure improvements, and utility connections. The multiplier effect flows entirely to the county.

During the multi-year construction phase, 1,688 union workers drawing prevailing wages will spend money in Imperial County. They will rent housing, buy groceries, eat at restaurants, purchase work supplies, and use local services. The businesses that serve them will hire additional staff. The hotels and rental properties that house out-of-region workers will generate occupancy tax. The contractors and subcontractors who supply materials and services will place orders with local vendors wherever possible.

Economic research consistently finds that major construction projects generate two to three indirect and induced jobs for every direct construction position. Applied to 1,688 direct positions, that implies a total employment impact of four to five thousand jobs during the build phase — in a county where the working-age population is roughly 100,000 people.

The Infrastructure That Comes With It

The project includes a dedicated 330-megawatt substation — infrastructure that the developer is paying for, not the county, not IID ratepayers. The wastewater recycling upgrades the developer proposed for municipal plants in El Centro and Imperial would have improved those utilities’ infrastructure at private expense. The 862 megawatt-hour battery storage system would add grid stabilization capacity to the IID service territory, benefiting ratepayers who would otherwise pay for those stabilization services through utility rates.

These are not ancillary benefits. They are the kind of private-funded public infrastructure improvements that counties typically spend decades trying to attract through tax incentives, grant competitions, and development agreements. They are being offered as part of the standard project package — and the opposition is fighting to refuse them.

The Institutional Question

When a region consistently fails to convert economic development opportunities into actual investment, it eventually stops attracting them. Site selectors and developers maintain institutional memory. A county that fights a $10 billion by-right project through years of litigation sends a signal to the next developer evaluating a site list that includes Imperial County: find somewhere else.

The officials litigating against this project will not be held responsible for the investments that don’t come next. The residents who depend on the jobs and tax revenues those investments would have generated will bear that cost invisibly — in the school that stays underfunded, the fire station that stays understaffed, the young adult who moves away because there isn’t enough work to stay.

Imperial County has one chance to get this right. The courts have agreed the project is legal. The land has been zoned for this use for decades. The investment is ready. The decision now is whether the county’s institutions will honor the choices that brought it here.